Five Times Tony Stark Died
by textbooknarcissism
Summary: A number of times that Tony could have died in Iron Man. Rated for character death and a moment of gore. Movieverse.
1. Chapter 1

10. Tony doesn't make it out of the reactor explosion.

When Pepper pushes the emergency overload button and runs out, Tony doesn't flip himself up and away from the blast in time. He gets hit with the blast just before Obediah does, and goes flying into the air only to fall back down on top of Obediah, causing them both to tumble down into the factory. Pepper makes it out in time and barely gets out of the way of the blast.

When the explosion has calmed down, the SHIELD clean up team finds Tony and Obediah, but neither of them are recognizable.

...

9. The Iron Monger crushes Tony on the highway.

"How ironic, Tony! Trying to rid the world of weapons, you gave it's best one ever. And now, I'm gonna kill you with it!" These are the last words Tony Stark hears before the man he treated like a father figure, began to crush him with his own prototype of Tony's suit.

Tony would like to tell you that his last thoughts were of Pepper, or his parents, or really anything better than what it actually was. His last thoughts were of how sometimes he was so close to Obediah, that he could tell where he had missed a spot or two shaving.

...

8. Tony dies when Obediah takes his arc reactor.

When Obie took Tony's reactor for his prototype, Tony should have been able to get up, and drag his body away to that backup arc reactor, thanks to Pepper. But he didn't.

Obediah sits with Tony, staying with him until the very last moment. Obie smiles that sinister, yet sweet smile he does, and watches Tony die. He knew that if he left Tony would get out of it, he always did. Tony's eyes begin to slowly close, and Obediah checks his right wrist for a pulse. He holds his hand on Tony's wrist, feeling nothing.

When he doesn't feel a pulse, he gets up and takes a final look at Tony, with a certain expression that you wouldn't quite be able to place.

He turns the lights out as he exits the living room.

...

7. The F-22 Raptor does shoot Tony down.

After Tony saves Gulmira, and blows up the tank that failed at taking him down, he flies home expecting a smooth flight. He is humming a song to himself, when two F-22 Raptors appear behind him, threatening to blow him up just with their existence. He ducks and rolls, and they shoot and they miss, and Rhodey calls him.

Just as he answers the phone, one of the F-22's does hit him, and he plummets down into the ground. He dies upon impact, but the suit doesn't go out. Jarvis is still able to run a diagnostic to tell whether he's dead or not, and as he finishes doing so, the suit's power dies.

It doesn't take Rhodey long to realize what had happened.

...

6. Tony dies while saving Gulmira.

When the tank shoots him down from the sky, he falls. When it tries to shoot him again after he stands up, it doesn't miss. It hits him square in the chest and Tony goes flying backwards into a large mound of dirt and rock; but he doesn't die. He tries to get up, tries to forget about the pain, only to be hit once more in the chest by the tank.

This is when he dies.

The military find him a week later when they are finally cleared to go into Gulmira.

At first they don't realize who it is, and having his best friend identify him only hurts that much more.

...

**A/N: Kaaay, I don't really know what this story is, so I'll try to explain it. Basically I was watching the Iron Man movie, and spotted out a few times that Tony could've died. So I numbered out times, starting with 1 in the beginning, and ended with 10, at the end. So I started the fic with the last, and will work my way to the first. It hurt so much to kill off my favorite character, but the idea festered in my head and I had to write it. Please tell me if its crappy xo**


	2. Chapter 2

5. Tony dies after being thrown from the sky while in a free fall over Manhattan.

The ice freezes the suit, and Tony tries to think over his life one last time.

"Jarvis?" He says calmly, as soon as the suit's power comes back to life. "Did I turn the stove off before we left?"

"I do not know, sir, but if we don't get you stable in 1.2 seconds-" Jarvis is off by barely a second. Tony is hurled from the sky and falls headfirst into the highway, right between two taxis at a red light.

Pepper finds out two days later, after going through a panic attack over where he is. She yells at SHIELD for not being responsive enough and letting her know.

She yells and screams and cries and mourns.

...

4. Unbelievably, Tony dies while testing the boots for flight.

"Test thirty four," he says, as he steps into the unfinished bots of what would later be the Iron Man suit. "Dummy is still on fire safety, just as a precaution," Tony glares at Dummy and readies himself for flight. He bends his knees slightly.

"Start at 5.5 thrust capacity, and gradually move up to 6.0," Tony held his hands out in front of him. "And three... two... one."

The boots fired up and Tony hit the wall behind him, only to keep going and be dragged across the wall. No matter how much he screamed and flailed his arms, the boots didn't shut off and continued to throw him around his workshop. His math must have been wrong.

Tony was left on the floor when the test boots stopped banging him against the walls. He had four broken ribs, a cracked skull, a fractured arm; and those were only the injuries he could definitely feel. There was blood on everything and he could vaguely hear Jarvis asking if he was alright.

When Pepper finds him some hours later, he's already gone.

...

3. Tony dies in the desert.

He makes it out of the cave alive. When the suit crashes in the desert from the sky, it takes tony a minute or two to crawl out of the mess. He's dirty and scummy and hurt and he's got sand in all the wrong places, but he still pulls himself out of the mangled suit. He doesn't want to leave the suit there, should it fall into the wrong hands, but he has no choice. He wanders through the sand and heat, in any direction other than back to the cave. The sun never stops shining down on him.

The plane that should have saved him flies overhead, and he waves his arms and screams frantically. It circles him twice, but does not stop, and instead flies away.

Tony drops to his knees in the sand and screams one last time before curling up in a ball. He doesn't have the energy or incentive to keep going. He knows they won't find him.

But at least he made it out.

...

2. Tony dies in the cave.

Yinsen has very steady hands. He is trying his best to save this man's life, even though they have only met once. Yinsen hopes - knows - that he can save this man.

Raza's men are yelling at him while he operates, saying he was going to slow or doing it wrong. It got gradually harder to concentrate. When the time came for him to inset the electromagnet into Tony's chest, he had one chance. He has to be quick and use his time well, and he knew he was going to make it.

That's when one of Raza's men decided to give Yinsen a forceful shove. Yinsen drops the electromagnet and Tony screams and clutches at his chest; eyes half open. He stops breathing seconds later.

The men tell Raza it was Yinsen's fault; that he failed.

They kill Yinsen three days later.

...

1. The first time Tony dies is when the RPG goes off a little too close to him; he doesn't have time to move.

The shrapnel goes deep and direct into his chest, as if his body armor weren't even there. He dies almost instantly, the RPG also ripping open his spinal column, where there is no armor to protect; just bone and tissue.

Obediah regrets this.

For one, because the Ten Rings wouldn't give back the money he paid them, claiming they "got the job done." But it wasn't the same.

Tony Stark dies alone in Afghanistan, with a team of more dead soldiers. No one sees him die. Iron Man never exists; it was a mere one-time thought in the back of a billionaire's mind.

Obediah Stane mostly regrets Tony's death because he never gets to kill Tony with his bare hands; looking straight into his eyes.

...

**A/N: Aaaahhh I'm so sorry for killing Tony so many times, but I was actually super super super proud of this fic. Feedback makes me happy, and thank you for reading this :)**


End file.
